Open House

By Matthew Mazzotta

Artist Matthew Mazzotta, the
Coleman Center for the Arts, and the people of York Alabama have teamed up to
transform one of York's most iconic blighted properties into a new public
space. Open House is a house with a secret, it physically transforms from the
shape of a house into an open-air theater that seats one hundred people by
having its walls and roof fold down.

On June 15 2013, a ribbon cutting
by the Mayor of York, Gena Robbins, inaugurated Open House. The symbolic
gesture was followed with an invocation prayer to bless the project by Reverend
Willie, performances by a gospel choir and the local R&B funk band Time
Zone, as well as an outdoor film screening of Dr. Suess's Lorax. For the town
of York, this is the beginning of a series of free public events programed by
the Coleman Center for the Arts. Since the opening, a number of events have
been offered free and open to the public including the screening of the mainstream
films as well as art film shorts like Andy Warhol eats a hamburger which
coincided with hamburgers being sold at the event by local businesses. Last
fall the Mayor of York, held the Town Meeting in Open House.

In January 2011, Matthew was
invited by the Coleman Center For The Arts to organize an artwork with the
people of York. During his initial visit to York, Matthew asked people from the
community to bring something from their living room so that they could recreate
a living room outdoors in the middle of the street as a way to provoke
discussion about what were on peoples minds and to generate ideas about what
direction they might go in. From this conversation, they developed a project
that uses the materials of an abandoned house as well as the land it sits on to
build the transforming structure on the footprint of the old house.

The metamorphosis of Open House
is designed to require cooperation. It takes four people one and a half hours
to unfold the structure. The foundation is made of used railroad ties, which
anchor the custom fabricated industrial hinges to five rows of stadium seating.
The rows of seats fold down with the aid of a hand winch and enough manpower to
counter balance the hefty, but agile structure.

Through the project, Matthew
hopes to directly address the lack of public space in York, AL by providing a
physical location that becomes a common ground for community dialogue and
activities. The new structure carries the weight of the past through the
materials that were salvaged and repurposed from the old structure, most
visibly the original pink siding. When Open House is fully unfolded, it
provides an opportunity for people to come together and experience the
community from a new perspective. When it folds back up, it resembles the
original abandoned house, reminding people of the history of what was there
before.

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